The conference held at Fulham Palace in October, 1900 produced a report entitled The Doctrine of Holy Communion and Its Expression in Ritual. This report was edited by Henry Wace, the Dean of Canterbury (1836-1924).

Henry Wace

Three statements of eucharistic doctrine were made at the conference, and although the conference itself could not reach agreement on any statement of doctrine on the Eucharist, these statements represent positions taken by their authors. Each of these statements will now be discussed.

Handley Moule

Handley Carr Glyn Moule (1841-1920) was at the time of the conference in 1900 the Norrisian Professor of Divinity in the University of Cambridge. In 1901 he became the Bishop of Durham and was one of the leading Evangelicals of his time (Cross and Livingstone, 1984: 945-946). Moule expressed his views on the Eucharist in these words:

“I believe that, if our eyes, like those of Elisha’s servant at Dothan, were opened to the unseen, we should indeed behold our Lord present at our Communion. There and then, assuredly, if anywhere and at any time, He remembers His promise, ‘Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them’. Such special presence, the promised congregational presence, is perfectly mysterious in mode, but absolutely true in fact, no creation of our imagination or emotion, but an object for our faith. I believe that our Lord, so present, not only the Holy Table, but at it, would be seen Himself, in our presence, to bless the bread and wine for a holy use, and to distribute them to His disciples, saying to all and each, ‘Take, eat, this is My body which was given for you: Drink ye all of this; this is My blood of the new covenant which was shed for you for the remission of sins’. I believe that we should worship Him thus present in the midst of us in His living grace, with unspeakable reverence, thanksgiving, joy, and love. We should revere the bread and the wine with a profound sense of their sacredness as given by Him in physical assurance of our joyful part, as believers in Him, and so members of Him, in all the benefits of His passion. Receiving them, while beholding Him, we should, through them as the equivalent signs of His once sacrificed body and blood, take deep into us a fresh certainty of our perfect acceptance in Him our sacrifice, and also of our mystical union with Him as He, once dead, now lives for us and in us, thus feeding on Him in the heart, by faith, with thanksgiving. Receiving His signs, we should look up with renewed and inexpressible confidence through Him to the Father. I do not think that the Holy Scriptures give us reason to believe that this sacred procedure (which we cannot see, but which is truly present to faith) involves any special attachment of His presence to the sacred signs, albeit called His body and His blood by reason of their equivalence as divine tokens.” (Moule, in Wace, 1900: 72-73, 91).

Moule’s words are seemingly and surprisingly realist, in that he speaks of Christ being present in the Eucharist, but in some way hidden, but Moule’s real meaning is nominalist. Eric Mascall in his 1953 book entitled Corpus Christi, called this view of the eucharistic presence ‘realistic receptionism’ (Mascall, 1953: 142). The presence of Christ for Moule is only through faith. There is no presence of Christ in the signs in any realist sense. Moule suggests that if the communicant was able in some way to see the unseen then it would be Christ that would be seen ‘at’ the table, blessing and distributing the bread and wine. The presence of Christ is real, but accessible only to faith and in no way dependent on or instantiated in the signs of the Eucharist. There is a sense that the realist presence Moule speaks of is immoderate, in that it is the actual bodily or fleshy Christ who is present, and yet unseen, but this immoderate realist presence is not related in any way to the signs. Christ is not ‘on’ the table in some passive sacrificial manner but actively moving about, handling the elements and distributing them to the communicants, and speaking words to them. It is because of this presence that Moule states there should be deep reverence for what is happening in the Eucharist. The bread and wine are described as being ‘sacred’ and a ‘physical’ means of being assured that the communicants are members of Christ and receivers of the benefits of his death. It is in receiving the signs, says Moule, that the communicant has an ‘equivalent sign’ of Christ’s sacrificed body and blood and it is by these signs that the communicant is assured of a mystical union with Christ and of a feeding upon him. Whilst this language is suggestive of realism, it is in fact not realism but nominalism that Moule is advancing. He specifically rejects any attachment of the Christ’s presence to the signs in the Eucharist. It is only by faith with thanksgiving that the communicant is seen to receive the benefits of Christ’s presence and sacrifice. Moule’s theology of the Eucharist is that of moderate nominalism. Clearly Christ is seen to be present, but this only occurs by faith. The signs in no way instantiate the signified in any realist sense since there is no real presence of Christ in the elements.

Charles Lindley Wood - Viscount Halifax

Charles Wood (1839-1934) (Lord Halifax), a prominent lay person, also made a statement on the Eucharist at the Fulham Palace Conference. His statement emphasised the spiritual change in the bread and wine, such that they became the body and blood of Christ. He made the following comments:

“That the bread and wine, by virtue of our Lord’s institution, become sacramentally the body and blood of Christ.” (Halifax, in Wace, 1900: 68).

The question must be asked what did Halifax mean by ‘become’. Did he mean a change in substance or did he mean something else? The following words help to explain his meaning:

“That the change is sacramental, in a sphere outside the cognisance of sense, to be accepted and therefore to be apprehended by faith, that is, to the eye of faith, since ‘faith is not imagination, but believe only what is objectively true’, the bread and wine are the body and blood of Christ, but that in the natural order they remain what they were before.” (Halifax, in Wace, 1900: 69).

Clearly Lord Halifax meant that the process of bread and wine becoming the body and blood of Christ did not involve a physical change in the elements. The change was sacramental and subject only to faith. This however did not mean that there was no realism in what Halifax was arguing. Indeed he spoke of the Eucharist as:

“ … the service which He [Christ] has instituted for the perpetual memory of His death” and in which Christ “gives to His faithful people His body as broken, His blood as poured out, mystically represented and exhibited under the aspect of death by the separate consecration of the bread and wine.” (Halifax, in Wace, 1900: 91).

The signs are closely associated with the signified in a realist sense as well as the faith of the communicant, but the signs do not become the literal or fleshy presence and sacrifice of Christ in an immoderate realist sense. The sense of realism that Halifax describes here is moderate realism. Indeed Halifax affirms this by saying:

“That Christ is present in the Holy Eucharist not in a corporal or natural manner, not locally as if descended from heaven upon our altars, but sacramentally only, spiritually, after the manner of a spirit.” (Halifax, in Wace, 1900: 92).

Immoderate realism is denied and moderate realism is affirmed.

Charles Gore

Charles Gore (1853-1932), at the time of the conference, a Canon of Westminster, and subsequently Bishop of Birmingham and later Bishop of Oxford, also made a statement on the Eucharist at the Fulham Palace Conference. In his statement Gore said:

“I believe that ‘the bread which is of the earth receiving the invocation of God is no longer common bread, but Eucharist, made up of two realities (πραγματων), an earthly and a heavenly’, that is, the bread and wine in all their natural reality and the spiritual realities of the body and blood of Christ, which are inseparable from Christ Himself in His whole Person. Therefore, as truly as with the eye of sense I behold Jesus Christ present to feed me with His own body and blood, sacramentally identified with the bread and wine.” (Gore, in Wace, 1900: 74, 92).

Gore’s words are not only an expression of moderate realism, in that he associates the signs with the signified, but he also affirms that the signs remain in their natural reality while also being a spiritual reality of Christ’s body and blood. This remaining in the natural reality excludes any immoderate realism in relation to the bread and wine of the Eucharist in that there can be no change of substance. The two realities, the earthly and spiritual, he sees as inseparable from Christ’s whole person. The earthly and the spiritual therefore can be described as both being instantiations of Christ’s whole person. This he describes as an ‘identification’, where Christ’s body and blood is identified sacramentally with the bread and wine of the Eucharist. Gore’s theology of the Eucharist expressed in this statement is that of moderate realism.

The Conference held at Fulham Palace in 1900 suggests that a variety of views was held in the Church of England regarding the Eucharist. While Moule presented a moderate nominalist (or perhaps realistic receptionism) view, Lord Halifax and Gore presented moderate realist views relating to Christ’s presence and sacrifice in the Eucharist.

Nathaniel Dimock published a work in 1911 entitled Some Notes on the Conference held at Fulham Palace in October 1900 on the Doctrine of Holy Communion and its Expression in Ritual. Dimock’s comments have relevance for this case study and should be read in conjunction with the case study devoted to Dimock’s work (Case Study 4.3).

Dimock asserts that a real presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist is frequently asserted by the Church of England (Dimock, 1911a: 1) but this notion of a true real presence “is certainly not ‘the Real Presence’ in or under the form of, the consecrated elements” (Dimock, 1911a: 2). If any notion of a real presence of Christ in the Eucharist is allowed, then this real presence cannot be ‘in’ or ‘under’ the consecrated bread and wine. Dimock is therefore suggesting that there are two senses in which real presence can be spoken of – a substantial or corporal real presence and a real presence which is not substantial or corporal but effectual and verily and indeed present. The substantial and corporal sense of the real presence Dimock sees as “simply an unwarrantable and untrue definition of the mode” (Dimock, 1911a: 3) but the effectual presence is one which Dimock argues the Reformers upheld strongly. The difficulty with Dimock’s analysis centres on the way he defines any presence which is ‘in’ or ‘under’ the elements. For him the only sense in which a presence can be ‘in’ or ‘under’ the elements is in a substantial or corporal sense, thereby excluding the idea of a presence ‘in’ or ‘under’ the elements which is not corporal or substantial. The idea of a moderate realist presence does not seem to be considered and the only idea of a realist presence put forward here is one that is substantial and corporal (i.e. immoderate realism). Dimock therefore is advocating a moderate nominalist eucharistic theology.